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It’s been a long Christmas-New Year combo this year, and, frankly, I’ve been busy. Too much eating, drinking and sleeping and tv footie to fit in any serious blogging.

So, besides you, my beloved fans, what have I missed? Wolves festive record is as follows:

Wolves 2-0 Burnley
Liverpool 2-0 Wolves
Wolves 0-3 Manchester City
Tranmere 0-1 Wolves (FAC)

This leaves them nestling not unhappily, but a little unsecurely, in 15th – 1 point above the drop zone. The Burnley game was a good result, and let’s not get involved in any nonsense about whether it vindicated McCarthy’s team selection for Man U or not – it was a good result for the fixture.

Wolves performance in the next two was fair, but it would have been nice to have seen a point or two. Wolves looked capable of comfortably achieving a draw against Liverpool were it not for stephen Ward’s avoidable sending off, but it was not to be.

It’s also good to see progress made in the Cup, even with an uninspiring performanace against Tranmere. The result was what was required and Palace await in the next round…

A loss, even by a three goal margin, is not entirely unexpected. Mick McCarthy’s team selection was. With Marcus Hahnemann in goal the only survivor from Saturday’s heroics at White Hart Lane, I’m glad I didn’t travel to this one. This doesn’t mean I can’t understand the selection – Mick thinks we were most likely to lose anyway and he’s not going to get a performance like Saturday’s out of the same players three times in eight days. He doesn’t want any more injuries. However, I hate the idea that any team, let alone mine, should not wholeheartedly go after every point they can.

In fact, it seems that the second string weren’t awful against an out of sorts United side, but this does raise enough doubt in everyone’s minds as to how the first choice might have performed to cause more than a few raised eyebrows. The fans who paid £40 for a ticket are rightly furious, but long term judgement is likely to rest on whether the gamble pays off and Wolves win on Sunday and are out of the bottom three at the end of the season. Football fans can easily turn on a manger, so let’s hope no long term damage is done, because eveyone needs to be behind the players and the manager for the team to survive in this League.

If they were being honest, I’m sure that even the most ardent Wolves fans would join me in admitting that today was most definitely not the day they expected to see Wolves climbing out of the drop zone. But that’s just what they did today with a fantastic win against a Spurs side who have been scoring for fun.

After Wolves took the lead in the third minute with some great work from Milias and Doyle, I was hiding behind my paws for 94 minutes. However fine the Wolves performance – and it was fine – it could be described as little more than hanging on for large periods. There were no passengers for Wolves today, and every member of their team ran themselves into the ground, but particularly notable performances came from Milijas, Doyle, Henry and Stearman, with Ebanks-Blake also impressing. A second clean sheet, a second away win, a second sucessive win, and a very unexpected boost for everyone ahead of another hard away trip to Man United on Tuesday.

I don’t know if I really think we’ll win this one, but am feeling cheerful 20 minutes before kick off, and refuse to consider the alternatives. Wolves have two changes: Ward for Mancienne (with Stearman moving to the centre) and Milijas for Halford, with Edwards moving wide right.

Really hoping to see Milijas imposing himself on the game as we all hoped he might at the start of the season. We need to see Wolves playing with a bit of confidence and, crucially, hitting a few good strikes from outside the box.

I and many others have bleated in recent times (prior to deserved beatings by Arsenal and Chelsea) that we haven’t been getting the results our performances deserve. Today we got exactly what we deserved.

A largely skill-less and passionless performance in the first half, gave way to, well, much of the same but with bells on in the second half.

As Mick correctly stated ahead of this match, it is these games, not the expected defeats against the big boys by which or season will be defined. Too many more games like this and it will be defined as a battle to see if we or Portsmouth as worse.

Must do better.